On April 23, 2012, AQHA member Jason Abraham and two related business entities sued the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division.

The complaint asks the court to order the AQHA to revoke AQHA Rule 227(a), on the basis that an outright restriction on the registration of cloned horses and their offspring allegedly violates federal antitrust laws.

Rule 227(a) was approved in 2004 by the AQHA board of directors, which prohibits all cloned horses and their offspring from being included in the AQHA’s breed registry.

Other breed registries, such as the Jockey Club and the Paso Fino Horse Association, have also ruled that cloned horses and their offspring are not eligible for registration.

As discussed in this prior post, Texas law (which may or may not be deemed applicable in this case) favors a policy of judicial non-intervention with respect to the internal affairs of voluntary associations, such as the AQHA. An exception to Texas’s policy of judicial non-intervention can apply in cases where a valuable right or property interest is at stake in a lawsuit, and cases where a voluntary association’s rules violate the law.